Podcast Announcement Hi there! I promise I edit more of my new book every day around say, paid jobs, and all things that must be done in life. But enjoy this new project, which is my writing but now as a podcast. If you drive often or prefer to listen rather than read, this is perfect for you! Listen here:
Remember the Bowline From the Mexican Rainforest Between Tepic and San Blas… My pal Juan and I, we’re going to guide the boss’s friends on a night hike. What could go wrong? Well, a hurricane is swirling over the Pacific. Surrounding storms have drenched this rainforest “resort” with its tin roofs, walls made out of chopped up RVs, and no-AC cabins. The corrugated roofs over the bar and reception rattle and ping under endless raindrops. Trails become mud. Guests vanish into their cabins. Dogs nap under tables. But the boss’s pals can’t be discouraged. They know the guy who owns this place, so everything, even severe weather, must be under control. Hiking up a rocky, muddy trail in the night, we step-stone across a stream that flows away then plunges down into a big double-decker waterfall. We’re taking them to an indigenous sweat lodge ceremony. A hut with wool walls over a bamboo frame with a pit full of stones from a fire pit in the middle. There will be chanting and drums while the guides dump buckets of water on the rocks to fill the hut with steam. We sat in the mud, in the lodge, in the dark, amid the steam from the rocks, and the smell of burning sage, sandalwood, and cinnamon bundles. It was quite lulling, but… While we were away…the heavens fed that same stream we crossed to get here, and it deepened, strengthened and swelled till it was waste high, both because the water rose, and because the rocky ground beneath it was rapidly eroding. The stepping stones we used to get here rolled away under a flood of chocolate milk-colored water, never to be seen again. Steamed, chilled out, and sleepy, we worked our way back to that stream to discover our path back was gone. Juan waded in, and the rolling rocks underfoot, the bark and branches that filled the water battering his legs, and the sheer ceaseless rushing power of the water told him that there was no chance of crossing. The middle-aged women, the boss’s pals, would be bowled over, swept downhill, and sent careening over the edge of the rockfalls. Our flashlights shined cones of light through the dashing rain. The river kept getting deeper. We had no cell service, Walky-Talky, radio, or plan of any kind. Juan and I conversed. The crew in our charge huddles in the rain with crossed-arms, all goose fleshed. Good sports, but for how long? They want answers, and here we are, implicitly on the hook for them. Bro, I tell Juan. It is really powerful, but I am 90% sure I can cross to get us all a rope. Really? Yeah. I mean, if you have other ideas I’m all ears, but it looks like our best bet. Ok. You know if you fall you won’t get back up, it’s just a ride down to the falls? I know, but I think I can make it. I felt it out. Played around in some rivers, forded one or two in my day. I want to do it. I pop off my sneakers and chuck them to the far side of the water. Ah, but what cockiness. In the early steps, so far so good, but the ground becomes soft mud, and soon I’m up to my hips in water. Smooth stones get swept downstream under foot. Any one of them could bend an ankle in half if you’re not careful. Now in the middle, the current rages stronger. Bark bits and branches floating in the water batter my legs. An underwater thorn vine rakes across my shin. I hold my breath, widen my stance, spread my hands out, and churn forward. It gets worse, but I can practically put my hands on the other bank by now. I do so, and exit the water in a bear crawl. Think we can all make it? Juan calls. I barely did. Let me get a rope, so we can be sure. Pop back on the shoes, and dead sprint to the large screen house for zip line and climbing gear. The rain gets meaner. Giant toad in front of the door – truly softball sized or larger. I’d ogle him, but the boss’s friends are waiting. He hops out of the way, I steal a white rope, hope it’s longer than two tree trunks and a small river, and sprint back to the water. Ah, but where is the tree I planned to anchor to? I’ll have to wade back in to get it. Juan is consoling the shivering crew in Spanish. I’m going to tie a bowline, a knot used for rescue harnesses because it absolutely will not untie on its own, no matter how hard it’s pulled. Juan’s flashlight beam strobes and spazzes over my fingers as I work the rope around the tree. I throw the knot together as more floating bark batters my legs, as more mud erodes under my feet. Give the rope a yank and horror – it unties. Wait a minute, this should’t happen. Sure, it’s been a minute since life asked me to tie a one, but what about all those camp challenges? Who can tie a bowline behind their back, blindfolded, or underwater while treading, which I did while sinking cinderblock anchors for floating docks? This shouldn’t happen, not after any number of years. Juan’s light is far from my work now, and it’s become a matter of pride. No, it’s a matter of life and death, of not letting the boss’s friends take a long wet plunge to dark oblivion. Eyes closed, going by feel this time, by instinct, tracing the loops of rope with my fingertips while a thin branch bends against my face, scratching it. The rabbit comes up out of the hole, goes around the tree, and dives back in the hole. I give the finished knot a yank, it holds fast, and I knew the trees themselves would wash away before it untied. I opened my eyes and saw that looping shape I knew to be a perfect bowline. Coil over my shoulder, I fight my way back to the other end and find an anchor tree there. Another bowline, this one in probably less than half a second. I twanged the rope over the water, and everyone understood what to do. Juan went first to act as a spotter. He is a big guy, but his knee ligaments were injured and torn a long time ago, so he’s a tad wobbly. First, we send across a blonde-haired Romanian woman. She gets midway, stumbles in the water, and clutches the rope to stand up again. Juan lends her a hand up. The current has her horizontal. Without the rope, she would have been washed away in seconds. VIP after VIP we shepherd across that roaring rush of water, those treacherous ankle-rolling rocks, those mischievous underwater thorn vines, those mini boats of bark debris that flick and fleck the skin. They make you swat at your thighs (has a water snake slithered out in the darkness?) But a step at time, a held hand at a time, we get each VIP to safety. Finally, I untie the far end of the rope, haul myself through the water and untied the bowline on the other side. Next, we bring everyone back to that tin roof with the bar inside an RV. Get them towels, drinks, and pour ourselves a few celebration tequilas. For hours, we recap and re-recap the night away. The victory and hero endorphins flow for a while, but when I lay in my bed that night – wait! We should have had them on the other side of the rope, so it braced them against the current. Holding on was good but – there won’t be a next time but – they should have been on the other side of the rope. Then, it would have been perfect work. Then it would have been perfect. Thanks for reading! Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
All is Lost Let’s get out of here. It’s obviously friends and family night at the one nightclub in town, everyone else already has their people, we’re not going to meet anyone here, let’s go. We leave. Next stop is the beach at night. Lightning is visible but we can’t hear thunder as we stumble drunk and bored through this mosquito-bitten, quiet little town in Mexico. Anyway, we steal a couple plastic chairs from the abandoned, unguarded beach cafes and park them shoreside to watch the water and light show at night. Kinda want to swim. Me too, but I didn’t bring anything. Eh. Could skinny dip. Nobody is around. True. Well, anything sounds like a good idea after enough tequila. Soon, we’re letting the high waves absolutely demolish us. Hard enough to stand on land this drunk, forget surging waves, foam, and even barrels. Look at these waves. Look at this moonlight. I wish I had a surfboard. I’d surf right now. You’d get murked by a shark. The Lord’s will be done. Really? I mean, I hope not. But the thing about life is, you might be on a hero’s journey, and you might be a cautionary tale. It takes a long time before you find out which. Damn. Waves roll with ancient elemental power. I try a few messy backflips in the white water. They go OK. Ok, I’m good if you are. Let’s get out of here. Back on the sand, gut-wrenching horror. The chairs where we left our clothes and things are empty. Armrests and seats glint white in the moonlight and lightning flashes. No more shirts, pants, underwear, wallets, keys, phone, cash, passports, all gone. They stole our stuff. They stole everything. Bastards. We can’t get back inside! We’re trapped out here. We’ll get malaria with all the mosquitoes out here. Even worse, people will thing we’re gay. Priority one. Squash that rumor. Dude, look at the waterline. All of the other chairs are knocked over. The ocean took our stuff. Not thieves. I can’t believe God would do this to us. I can. He let the Holocaust happen. Juan goes into full panic. He dives in the ocean. He sprints in a look around the beach. Not a well gridded search pattern, but it’s something. Bad stuff like this doesn’t happen to me, he tells the night. He pile drives his head in the dirt. He’s cursed with being accident prone but charmed with being indestructible. If you must be one, it’s good to be the other. He sprints in the water and back. Bad stuff like this doesn’t happen to me, he screams at the sky. Ah, but it does happen to me, which is the source of my acceptance. I’m eying the same surf shop where I’ve rented boards by day. Ok. Game plan. We raid the lost and found bin, steal shorts, hoodies, whatever people left. Towels, if that’s all there is. Get covered up and trek home. Tell the land lady to call a locksmith if she truly doesn’t have a spare key, like she said she doesn’t when we moved in. Roof for the night, worry about the rest tomorrow. I start plodding towards the surf shop. Wind howls. Waves roar. Sand fleas bite and mosquitoes buzz. It’s a harsh world when you’re nude. What’s this? In the gloomy moonlight, through the gauzy clouds. Five other white plastic chairs. And … OUR STUFF! Dude! It’s all here! Those weren’t our chairs! We drifted more than we thought. Juan collapses in the sand in gratitude. Dude, if we had stolen clothes from there we would have left our stuff here all night. Then it would have been gone by morning. Can you imagine? How close we came to our lives being ruined? It’s a tiny town. People already gossip about us. For what? Just being Gringos. Dang. I told you, stuff like this doesn’t happen to me. Well. Not this time. Thanks for reading! Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Announcement: My Second Book is Coming This week, I found a print shop in Tepic, Mexico, and spent thousands of Pesos on printing out the first draft of my second book. The printer whirred and clunked, and I paced as it spat out all 303 pages. It will be my first official novel. It’s titled, The Drifter’s Curse. It’s the story of a young man who gets cursed in Morocco after dating the wrong girl, and wanders from country to country trying to break it. Amid the bazaars and forbidden underground dance clubs of an ancient city, the narrator stumbles into the bloody world of real-life witchcraft. Wander with him through the foggy castles and beery pubs of the U.K.. Join him as he brings a single mother and her daughter to tour former Nazi concentration camps, earns room and board by working a farm in Spain, treks through the surreal salt caverns, mud volcanos, and eternal flames of Romania, and searches for his family on the Greek islands. It’s a story that pushes the real world as close to fantasy as it gets. If you look back at my flight paths, I circled the globe to get it. It is a work of fiction, but far more of it happened than you might ever think. I have at least two more drafts to complete before I consider the final product ready. No, I don’t know how long that will take. Beyond the story, I have a lot of decisions to make, like whether or not to find a publisher this time, or go independent again. I invite your input and thoughts, either in comments on this post, or by emailing me at: tomzompakos@gmail.com Thank you! Get my first book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Spice Heat. Sweat beads on every surface of my head, and runs in rivers down my temples. My mouth opens to pant like one of the skinny street dogs that scamper up and down the flooded mud roads, with their round rocks jammed together in ankle-rolling jumbles. On my plate are three tacos and a blistered chili pepper. We’re in a building that looks like a jail cell somewhere in San Blas, a largely forgotten, beat down coastal town in Mexico. My friend Juan covered his tacos in a creamy looking light orange salsa, an innocent looking green one, and only bothered to warn me about the third dark red, oily salsa. Assuming I was safe with two out of three sauces, I copied him and slathered them atop the taco happily. Bit a corner of the blistered chili, and half of a taco, admiring the fresh-baked tortilla made in the bakery across the street, the tender all-day stewed cut of cheap meat, the white cabbage and cactus salsa, but soon I got hit with the flamethrower. Every pore of mine opens, and chili oil floods out. Eyes dilate as if by a drug. It’s the type of spiciness that ignites your tongue, makes your ears pop; brings about a momentary deafness. In that spice induced tinnitus, Juan, whose perma-sweat stains the knees of his jeans chalky white with dry sodium deposits, garbles the praises of the food. For him, it is done just right. My American mind searches for a safe haven, but apparently real tacos aren’t served with sour cream, yogurt sauces, or even cheese. This place doesn’t have drinks, so I can’t ask for so much as a cardboard box of milk. There’s no air conditioning in this concrete box with black bars and no glass for windows. Fans blast hot air in my face, rattling and whirling. Sound returns, and outside, the night is frenetic with barking dogs, chattering street hawkers, babbling gossips, and the blaring horns of Ranchera music, and the pulsing speakers of boom boxes. The wings of billions of blood sucking insects beat. Smells of burning trash and coconut husks, which are set ablaze to keep the mosquitos away, float through the shop, brought in by the fan. There’s no wind. The warm water we’ve been brought makes everything worse. Tongue turns to red ember. Eyes melt away from their sockets. Shoe leather smolders around my feet. It’s more than a meal, it’s a right of passage, a diabolical transformation. I somehow finish the small tacos, and stumble out into the night, leaving hundreds of Pesos on the table. Juan follows me, mildly concerned, mildly amused. My head explodes in flames and I gape at him as a flaming skull. We pass a kid with a cart full of sour candies for sale, and- are you serious? Three bottle of different hot sauces to be poured into an open bag of candy. I run from the sight, smoke trailing from behind me. A woman sells popsicles, and tells us it’s two for one on lime with jalapeño, and pineapple chili. Juan is tempted. Those are his favorite flavors, but I breathe fire on him to voice my objection to peppered popsicle. He finally gets the point, and orders a coconut milk popsicle for me, and takes jalapeño lime for himself. One bite of the coconut ice and I realize, I just might make it, I just might survive. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Rain on my Toes – Manchester, UK. Rain on my toes! To wake me up in the middle of the night. Water found a channel in the dark ceiling overhead, here on the top bunk of a hostel in Manchester, UK. Sleeping here because of a long train delay on the way to Wales. The room is under a convenience store. Mountain Dew, 7-Up, Mars Bars and vapes in the shop overhead. Cranky people shuffling to the basement rooms in basketball shorts, flip flops and tank tops. One guy selling weed to other people from his large knit cap. Somebody watching videos on his phone who really doesn’t care that most people are trying to sleep. He either doesn’t have headphones or doesn’t use them. There’s maybe nine people in this room. The fluorescent lights turn on automatically whenever someone opens the heavy door. Outside, rain pounds the whole city. Weekenders drunk to the gills wandered around puddles, pissing on buildings. Talking and belching loud as can be in the dark night. Most places to eat were closed by the time my late train arrived. I wrap my feet in the dry part of the blanket and cram into the half of the bunk the drops don’t reach. Pillows over my head to shut out the world. It’s just one night, it’s just one night. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Most Vendors Do Candy Coffee on some porch in Medellin. When a street vendor wanders by rolling a cart with candy. I shake my head no when he points at it. Then he takes something out from under the cart. Some enormous rectangular object as big as his entire wingspan. He leans it on the front of the cart and lifts it. It’s a copper relief of the last supper. In case I wanted to by that instead. Where did it come from? Nicked from a decommissioned church? He covers it back up, and walks on down the road. Someone must want guava candy, sugar cane, or an enormous copper relief. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Acting Class at the Hostel Someone is dying. Someone is addicted to drugs. Someone else is heartbroken. Enraged at a lover’s betrayal. All poorly acted by students in the hostel courtyard. A brash instructor watches their scenes. Cuts them off if wrong, inadequate, or underwhelming emotion is displayed. The guys can’t cry on stage. When the guys can’t cry, the drama instructor makes them do push-ups. This man is going to get his tears. It is impossible to sleep in the room with all of this going on outside in the courtyard. But this is a beautiful room. Open air window. Here, many buildings are built this way. Without screens. High ceilings. Windows open. There’s a creek outside. You could never ask for better white noise. Still, on with pants and t-shirt. Time to watch the acting class. The courtyard makes a nice place to watch the class. Open air, big birch chairs. It’s a good show. On many levels. I can sleep late tomorrow. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Lost on Horseback Horses hip-check each other and stamp the dust on the dirt trail threading through the green mountains. Let me see if I can predict this one. Nick, they’ll give you that blondeone. It’s the most heroic looking. A blonde horse for a blonde dude, that’sthe logic they’ll follow. Rachel will probably get that smaller horse, seemsright for a girl. And Joel’s big, they’ll give him the big horse. See that one wandering off, munching flowers, and bothering the locals? That’s mine. Because I engage in similar behavior. Nick laughs at my line of reasoning. A brown water creek has been dug out into a large, shallow pond. Two kidsform a sopping wet, wobbly, two-man human tower, the base of which wears dripping, squelching Crocs. (Anxiety) cracked skulls and snapped necks when they topple. Splash – flailing limbs submerge under rippling water rings. They resurface spluttering water from lips and gulping air. Dogs lounge in the sun inside a chain-link pen. In a generator-powered restaurant built of particle board and corrugated tin, women boil rice, press guava, soursop, and mangos into juice, and grill fish for lunch. The grill sizzles. Reggaeton beats play. It’s lively here, but at least one of these lush green hills was the sightof a mass grave some years ago. Victims of Pablo Escobar, drug wars, andguerilla warfare. Hard to say where or which hilltop, it’s explained only invague gestures and vague terms. On the hilltops, near the shade of the tree line, crews of friends or families of four sit on blankets and grill hotdogs. The stable hand sets the length of stirrups, and fits bridles between bighorse teeth. Happy to drop a shoulder to shove a horse out of the way. Bullying them into good behavior. He wears a Guatemalan gaucho hat, a soccer jersey, and black mucking boots. But the story I had in my head was wrong. Nick gets the flower munching horse, Joel and Rachel’s horses are also reversed for reasons I can not understand to look at their respective sizes, and I get the blonde heroic looking horse. La Mona is her name. Memories return. I have seen the view of a horse’s mane and the back of itsflicking ears before. Felt this lurch and rock of its gait. Weekends withfriends off the clock at a summer camp job, taking the horses out for a ride. The bizarre way a horse can feel great precision in the urging of your intentions through the reigns. Lean and focus a sharp gaze at a place, and a smart horse will go there. Tug back, and she slows down. It seems so easy, yet. Experience counts for something. Rachel is beingwalked in circles. She is asking the horse to stop. English doesn’t work, so she tries Spanish. Nick is being brought into low-hanging branches by a horse that knows to account for its own height, but not that of an added rider. He laughs and bends them back from his face. They whip behind him as the horse nibbles shaded patches of grass. With a hissing whistle by the guide, and a flick of his switch, we’re off. LaMona is a competitor, and so I get to take the lead. Mountains so vast andgreen, on a scale too big for any picture. A view of the city’s pale buildingsin the valley. I am comfortable on the horse, so leaving the guide behind does not worry me. It does not worry the guide because he says the horses all know the trail anyway. We amble along, and I watch the green mountains and valleys flow by slowly in the sunshine. Nothing to worry about. But then La Mona trots up a green hillside following a needle-thin trail. I trust her. Why not? I can’t see the others. The trail gets thinner and thinner until I’m riding over grass. Ah, I was too proud of myself too soon. Clearly, this was a long, wrong turn. We arrive at a barb wired fence that reads, ‘Private Property, No Trespassing’ in Spanish. “I know you can’t read,” I say to La Mona. “But that sign says, No Trespassing. So how about it? Where are we?” Not so much as a snort in reply. I look back down the hill. My friends are nowhere in sight. “OK, we’re going back.” I tug the reigns, but La Mona shakes her head. I pull again and she doesthe same. She agrees to do an about face. But as soon as she gazes downhill, her legs start buckling. Knees inward, almost knocking. Horse fear. She turns her head back. Her eyes bulge. She must be thinking she will fall if she tries to go down that (admittedly) very steep hillside. Though she is the one who brought us up here. “You’re like a cat that gets up a tree and doesn’t know how to getdown,” I tell her. She doesn’t understand accountability, this horse. She snuffles and pleads for a different way down. Anything but the very steep, very scary hill. I can see the trail we’re supposed to be on below. I just need a way to get there that is not a straight line down. Searching, I see a shallow incline in the green hill. A needle of a trail buried in tufts of overgrown grass. But it is not steep, and La Mona likes this path far more. There are logs and branches all over this route. The horse can step over some, but if the debris is big enough, I need to hop off her and clear the path. I kneel to pull logs out of the way. She steps forward into where the logs arelying. One of them rolls up over her hoof. She steps again to escape it andbats herself across her opposite legs. The muscles in her torso shudder. Shewhines a little. She is stressed out, getting clumsy, clip-clopping, unhappy at the branches scraping her legs. I shush her and pull the branches away from between her feet. Finally, after what seems like an hour of riding and working, clearing brush, shushing and reassuring, petting, cooing, coaxing, and finally riding again, and sometimes a tightrope balance of riding on a steep hill, I am back on that main trail. But where are my friends? I can’t see them anywhere. But it’s OK. We are back on the right path, now. La Mona knows the way from here. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Cookie Smuggler Four shots of ouzo makes early morning strategizing a woozy challenge. Lesson of the road. Final night in Greece. Flight out in a few hours. Trying to figure out how to get pistachio cookies I bought on an island to survive reckless baggage handlers. Pistachio farmers on Aegina render their crop into every incarnation imaginable. Liqueur, soap, butter, bread, cookies, gelato, and of course bags of nuts. Well, they let me try this cookie they call a pistachio cigar. A chocolate crunchy tube filled with green pistachio butter. Think peanut butter, but made out of pistachios. It gets eaten, not smoked, in case the cigar name causes any confusion. Anyway, bought four cans, but they are not crush proof. Wrapping the cans in jeans really doesn’t help much. The only crush-proof part of my gear is…the hollow body of my acoustic guitar. Well, the strings are overdue for a change. They are not going to survive more altitude and humidity fluctuations in playable shape. They’ll sound like garbage, so they might as well be sacrificed to a worthy cause. Twisting metal tuning pegs. Prying up black bridge pins. Twang. Ping. Accidental notes get deeper, wobbly and unnatural before the string gives way and whips and snakes on its own. Each of the four cans fits snugly into the guitar’s sound hole. No wait. Two in, t-shirt, two more in, another t-shirt. Final t-shirt to secure them. Yes. Cigars in a guitar. Multiple people have told me this travel story. Except they were traveling from Cuba. Maybe it is from a movie, or it is one of those real-life tropes. Now I’ve got this story, too. Except mine are cigar cookies from Greece. But consider that these cookies are in plastic tubes with metal soda can tops. Some security agent scanning my guitar will see it loaded with four metal-capped cylinders with an unclear manner of tubing inside. Will they know it’s chocolate and pistachio not bomb casings and explosive putty? Will I ever bring home the flavor I tried to carry off that island? Time alone will tell. Goodbye to this room with its hard mattress, its unseeable biting insects, and balcony view of the Acropolis. On to what’s next. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.